In this, my final report as your Treasurer, to all UGRA’s financial supporters and to those of you who send words of appreciate for the Association’s work, my thanks.

Before looking at the budget, let me repeat what I stated in the last Newsletter. That is: we hope all will donate this year by cheque since it makes our record keeping easier; it will make things go more smoothly at the AGM and President’s luncheon since we will not have to deal with handling cash. The other advantage is that receipts will not have to be issued, as you will have confirmation in your transactions records or your cancelled cheques.

In introducing this year’s budget (at the end of this report), I want to refer you back to the recently completed financial year. First, you can see that we have a large “Cash on Hand” or carryover component for 2002-2003. Unfortunately, the picture is “not so rosy”. We did not make our income projection of last year and in fact, we received fewer donations in 2002. Regrettably, we are not gaining new supporters to offset deaths, despite the overall increase in retiree numbers (now nearing 1500). In the end, we failed to meet our objective by more than $1000 and this figure would have been considerably larger had it not been for those of you who donated in excess of our suggested $15 contribution.

The major reason for the carry-over then was not on the income side, but because we did not have to remit the monies we expected to for legal fees and disbursements ($5500) and for the actuarial assessment ($3500) in support of our case to help some of our retirees to gain an equitable pension. As well, part of the carry-over ($1500) represents donations for the 2002/03 year which came in prior to the 31st March year end. Finally, last year’s “Cash on Hand” was $2763. If all of these figures are added up and subtracted from this year’s apparently large carryover, we end up with a deficit of approximately $1440. This figure is larger than the projected deficit of $325 presented at the last AGM. So, that’s the “bad news”.

What about this year’s budget? First note that the budget has two new expenditure items. One item is Investments (or savings) into an “exigency” type fund. We had hoped to do this previously, but were unable to do so. The second new item is a web site.

On the income side, the donation projections are the same as last year ($9750) or $15 from an estimated 650 donors out of ap-proximately 1500 retirees. As such, if we meet this goal, it still only represents about 43% of the total membership. The interest figure is a pure guess on what we might get as a return for up to $5500 of investments (see Expenditures). We have already referred to the Cash on Hand item.

On the Expenditure side, the Le-gal/Disbursements have been carried over. Actuarial figures re-main as they were last year and it is expected that some or all of it will be used in the current financial year April 2002-March 2003.

Given approval, the web site set up and initial maintenance costs are estimated at $1600. The setup is a one-time expense. Accordingly, the upkeep will be reduced in subsequent years.

Of all other line items, most have increased minimally to meet projections regarding unforeseen cost increases, i.e. postage (which seems to go up several times a year and definitely caught us by surprise last year).

The largest projected increases in the budget are for the Director’s Insurance and meeting expenses. All insurances have increased post-September 11th and UGRA is currently seeking a new carrier since the company we were using has dropped all such coverage. Consequently, we expect to go as high as $1400. The big increase in “Meetings Expenses” stems from raised fees set by the University for space rental for Board and Committee meetings. A new expense item under this heading is possible as we may send dele-gates to a meeting to discuss the formation of a national Canadian University Retirees Association.

In all then, our projected budget has increased from last year, but with some luck with the Income (voluntary contributions) we shall be able to meet our obligations and once again build up a contingency fund.